Energy is central to development | Madeleine Bunting – guardian.co.uk

One of the finalists for the 2011 Ashden Awards is the Aga Khan Planning and Building Service, which brings affordable, energy-efficient technologies to families in northern Pakistan. Photograph: Ashden Awards

Affordable renewable energy needs to be taken seriously as the crucial ingredient of sustainable development, and the Ashden Awards recognise this

Energy, it seems, is the Cinderella of development policy. Listen to governments, aid agencies and the big foundations, and the priorities have been malaria, maternal mortality, vaccinations, HIV – health has hoovered up attention and aid dollars in the last decade. Education has come a close second. Now attention is slowly moving to include agriculture and food security, but the rhetoric is not being matched by the funding.

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"We started the Aga Khan University in Pakistan some 32 years ago and it has grown into a truly international institution, with major campuses in Africa as well as in Asia, and with programmes in many fields. But right at the centre of its mission, from the very start, has been one principle goal: to help ensure the people living in the developing world are able to access international standards of health care."